February 8, 1981
What moves a being from simply living to becoming aware of its own existence? Why do our relationships bring both joy and difficulty? How do ordinary choices become a spiritual path?
Session 19 explores these questions through Ra’s account of the evolution of consciousness. Its most practical teaching brings the discussion close to home: we discover ourselves through our encounters with others, and we shape our spiritual direction through the choices we make.
The following article presents the session’s teachings within the Law of One’s spiritual framework.
Life Awakens to What Is Already Within
When Don Elkins asks how an animal, tree, or mineral becomes “enspirited,” Ra corrects the premise. Spirit is not something added to an otherwise empty being. Rather, consciousness becomes aware of the intelligent energy already present within it.
In this view, spiritual evolution is an awakening to an existing reality. The Creator is already present throughout creation; experience gradually brings that presence into awareness.
Ra describes animals as the most common second-density beings to develop the individuality associated with movement toward third density. Trees may also become individualized through giving and receiving love. More rarely, a mineral or place may develop individuality through its loving relationship with a self-aware being.
These are metaphysical teachings about consciousness. Their invitation is to approach the living world with greater care: the love we give may matter beyond what we can measure or see.
The Larger Journey of Consciousness
At the beginning of the session, Ra distinguishes our experience of time from a larger vision of creation. Within a particular cycle, some beings may not move into another density. From the perspective of the infinite creation, however, every consciousness participates in every density.
Ra presents creation as a living expression of one infinite being, with successive creations compared to the beating of its heart.
For the spiritual seeker, this offers a perspective of belonging. Our present uncertainties take place within a much larger unfolding. We can take our choices seriously without assuming that our current understanding contains the whole journey.
Becoming Self-Aware
Ra identifies self-awareness as the essential requirement of third density.
Within this framework, second-density life is largely concerned with growth, instinct, and survival. Third-density consciousness can reflect on experience, combine rational and intuitive thought, and consider questions that reach beyond immediate physical needs.
A human being can ask: Who am I? What matters? How do my actions affect another person?
Ra also connects this stage with greater physical dexterity, social awareness, and a comparatively vulnerable body. These qualities create opportunities to think, cooperate, and learn through relationship.
The session attributes the broad pattern of these lessons to the Logos—the creative intelligence shaping the conditions of a particular creation while allowing free will.
Earth’s Transition in Ra’s Account
Ra says that some of Earth’s second-density beings reached third density through their own use of experience. Others received assistance from members of the Confederation whose service involved helping that transition. Ra describes this aid as telepathic.
The session places the beginning of Earth’s third-density cycle approximately 75,000 years ago. It also describes a rapid transformation of certain bodies into forms suited to human self-awareness, including changes in hair, skull structure, speech, and brain capacity.
These statements belong to Ra’s channeled cosmology; they should be read as that account rather than as an established scientific history of human evolution.
The spiritual emphasis is that growth involves both the being’s own response to experience and the help it receives. Assistance supports development while the individual still participates in the learning.
Why We Need One Another
One of the session’s central teachings concerns human vulnerability.
Ra explains that a body less able to manage everything alone encourages people to engage with one another. Through that dependence, the lessons of love become possible.
We need care as children. We benefit from companionship, cooperation, and the skills of others. At different times, we become the person who offers help and the person who receives it.
Ra says:
“The quickest way to learn is to deal with other-selves.”
—Session 19.13
In the Law of One, “other-selves” means other beings understood as expressions of the same Creator. The phrase gives relationship a deeper significance: each encounter is an opportunity for the Creator to know itself through different perspectives.
Our need for one another can become an opening through which patience, generosity, humility, and love develop.
Relationships as Mirrors
Ra compares life without other people to life without mirrors. Through relationship, we see aspects of ourselves that solitude alone may leave hidden.
Someone’s kindness may reveal how difficult we find receiving love. A disagreement may expose our need to control an outcome. Another person’s suffering may awaken compassion we have not yet expressed.
This does not mean that every criticism is accurate or that mistreatment must be accepted. A useful application of the mirror teaching is to examine our response while still exercising discernment about the relationship itself.
We might ask: What did this encounter stir in me? What am I protecting? What response would express both care and honesty?
Ra also gives solitude and meditation a place in this process. Relationships provide experience; reflection helps us understand it. Meditation allows those experiences to become part of a more integrated awareness.
Instinctive Loyalty and Conscious Polarity
The session makes a careful distinction between ordinary survival behavior and the deliberate service-to-self path.
Ra explains that a second-density animal may protect its pack because the pack is experienced as an extension of itself. A newly self-aware being may carry a similar identification with family, society, or country.
Ra describes this early orientation as lacking polarity. It is not yet the conscious negative choice.
The negative path begins when a being recognizes others as distinct beings and deliberately chooses to manipulate them for personal benefit.
This distinction matters. Looking after ourselves or loving our family is not, by itself, equivalent to choosing domination. The deeper question concerns how we treat others once we recognize their needs, freedom, and individuality.
A practical invitation is to let care widen beyond familiar boundaries.
Our Choices Form a Direction
Don asks whether people consciously recognize the moment when their path divides. Ra replies that most third-density beings have traveled far along a chosen direction before becoming consciously aware of it.
Our habits can therefore reveal an orientation before we have named it.
Repeated acts of kindness strengthen a willingness to serve. Repeated manipulation strengthens a preference for control. Small decisions accumulate into a way of meeting life.
Ra describes the two orientations through a metaphor of different kinds of enjoyment: some delight in creation’s beauty and shared happiness, while others take pleasure in domination and the suffering of others.
The metaphor places free will at the center. Awareness gives us an opportunity to examine what we have been choosing and what we want to cultivate next.
The Possibility of Change
Don assumes that changing paths must become harder as a being becomes more polarized. Ra gives a surprising answer: stronger polarization brings greater power and awareness, which can make a change of polarity easier.
The session identifies unrecognized repetition as the deeper difficulty—the condition of continuing a pattern without seeing its meaning.
For daily life, this suggests a hopeful practice: notice the pattern.
We may discover that we repeatedly withdraw when affection is offered, become controlling when afraid, or respond defensively before listening. Recognition creates room for a different response.
Within Ra’s teaching, a strongly developed direction does not erase free will. Consciousness retains the capacity to turn.
Spiritual Energy and the Limits of Astrology
Don compares polarization to electrical charge, and Ra accepts the analogy as a way to describe the capacity of consciousness to do spiritual work.
Ra then describes the person as an interconnected complex of physical, mental, and spiritual energy fields. The violet ray represents the overall expression of that complex, influenced by thoughts, bodily conditions, and relationships with the wider creation.
This is the session’s metaphysical description of spiritual energy.
When asked about astrology, Ra gives it a limited role: it may suggest basic tendencies or possibilities associated with cosmic configurations. It is only one influence among many.
The practical implication is to treat a suggested tendency as something to consider while continuing to exercise choice.
Caring for the Person Who Serves
The session closes with questions about Carla Rueckert’s ability to sustain the contact.
Ra says that sexual activity supports her positively in this context. Ra also says marijuana does not aid this particular service, attributing that to a short-lived disruption of mental continuity, and discourages LSD for Carla because of the subsequent drain on vital energy.
These remarks address Carla’s circumstances and channeling work. The session does not provide clinical evidence or a general medical assessment of these substances.
The final request is wonderfully ordinary: take greater care to ensure that Carla is wearing shoes.
After a discussion of cosmic evolution, the group is reminded to attend to the comfort of the person in front of them. Service includes practical care.
Bringing Session 19 into Daily Life
The session invites us to become more conscious participants in our own growth.
We can give greater attention to the love we offer animals, trees, and places. We can approach relationships as opportunities to understand ourselves. We can balance engagement with quiet reflection, recognize recurring habits, and choose responses that respect the freedom of others.
A simple evening practice is to reflect on three questions:
- What did another person help me see about myself today?
- Where did I respond with care, and where did I reach for control?
- What is one loving choice I can make more consciously tomorrow?
In this reading of Session 19, awakening becomes tangible in the way we live together. We learn to recognize the sacred within ourselves while allowing that recognition to change how we meet the world.
Source: The Law of One, Session 19, February 8, 1981. Home of The Law of One material, L/L Research.
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